Active Surveillance of Asymptomatic, Presymptomatic, and Oligosymptomatic SARS-CoV-2-Infected Individuals in Communities Inhabiting Closed or Semi-closed Institutions
Background: The high COVID-19 dissemination rate demands active surveillance to identify asymptomatic, presymptomatic, and oligosymptomatic (APO) SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals. This is of special importance in communities inhabiting closed or semi-closed institutions such as residential care homes...
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| Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Formato: | Articulo |
| Lenguaje: | Inglés |
| Publicado: |
2021
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/124522 |
| Aporte de: |
| Sumario: | Background: The high COVID-19 dissemination rate demands active surveillance to identify asymptomatic, presymptomatic, and oligosymptomatic (APO) SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals. This is of special importance in communities inhabiting closed or semi-closed institutions such as residential care homes, prisons, neuropsychiatric hospitals, etc., where risk people are in close contact. Thus, a pooling approach-where samples are mixed and tested as single pools-is an attractive strategy to rapidly detect APO-infected in these epidemiological scenarios.
Materials and Methods: This study was done at different pandemic periods between May 28 and August 31 2020 in 153 closed or semi-closed institutions in the Province of Buenos Aires (Argentina). We setup pooling strategy in two stages: first a pool-testing followed by selective individual-testing according to pool results. Samples included in negative pools were presumed as negative, while samples from positive pools were re-tested individually for positives identification. Results: Sensitivity in 5-sample or 10-sample pools was adequate since only 2 Ct values were increased with regard to single tests on average. Concordance between 5-sample or 10-sample pools and individual-testing was 100% in the Ct ≤ 36. We tested 4,936 APO clinical samples in 822 pools, requiring 86-50% fewer tests in low-to-moderate prevalence settings compared to individual testing.
Conclusions: By this strategy we detected three COVID-19 outbreaks at early stages in these institutions, helping to their containment and increasing the likelihood of saving lives in such places where risk groups are concentrated. |
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